Redstate

Plagiarism is bad for the blogosphere, that is why we offer links. The is more important for the conservative side (that relies more on trackbacks) than the liberal side (that is comments based).

I'm a Democrat and I read the DailyKos diary quoted, which is why I'm discussing here tonight. I'm not a whole lot older than Ben, but I lobbied for liberal stuff in Montana when the GOP had a 2/3 majority. The majority would win, my side would lose, but we would talk later that night at the bar based on the stuff we agreed upon. There are lots of people posting here who I'm sure would be great people to play some poker with.

Erick pointed out perfectly how attacking a blogger for getting a wider audience hurts us all. The conversation should be about ideas, not people. My side screwed up in that respect. Yet plagiarism screws up the entire system, and both your side and my side have screwed up by covering that up for political reasons.

The blogosphere should allow the best writers to be seen and get a greater audience, yet it will be a long time before that happens in the MSM after the last week.

...get the defendant's side of the story before they can defend their client, and we don't have that yet. Not on the plagiarism charges.

Remember, the Washington Post still employs some people (presumably) that can get to the bottom of a story. If WaPo clears Ben, then nothing DailyKos does will sabotage him, and if they "convict" him, nothing we do will save him.

Pray for him. It's no fun getting a public rectal exam like this.

Believe me, if the only thing getting thrown at Augustine was the "he's a racist!" charge, I'd be right there with you.  I deplore that kind of nonsense.  

But the plagiarism charges are still building, and that's where things get more tangible.  And while it's easy to write off one or two examples as coincidence or poor judgment or whatever, the case is getting far more troubling.  This has moved beyond the realm of coincidence or stupid mistake, and beyond the realm of "maybe we've all done something like this."  Not that I'm convinced that he's innocent or guilty -- I'm waiting for his own post.  That said, it seems bizarre to fire back so hard ('banality of evil'?  Kos as a fascist Nazi-commie?)  at the lefty blogs without refuting the solid part of their case.

It's obviously true that Augustine is getting subjected to far more scrutiny than he should.  But, it seems hard to exhonerate someone of their faults by claiming that, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't have found out about those faults...

I am for one am more than a little surprised at the fever pitch both "sides" of the blogosphere have worked themselves into on account of the hiring by the Washington Post of a conservative blogger.  Having been here a bit less than a year, I can say I have read many of Ben "Augustine" Domenech's posts here at RedState, and found them to be well-informed and articulate.  I have also read his posts on Red America and found them to also be reasonable and well-written.  I refuse to pass judgment on the plagiarism charges because I know nothing about the details.  If he is found to have plagiarized in the past, well, shame on him, but even if it is true, the way the "left" blogosphere has gone about investigating this alleged incident has been damnable.

However, that does not excuse the front-page posts I have seem here at RedState.  Granted, I find Erick's "defense" post less objectionable than this "attack" post, but let me explain.

Erick's defense post certainly does not sink to the level of the immature rants at DailyKos, myDD, and others.  However, he also unwittingly dignifies the very same by even posting a response.  I understand there is naturally rage among Ben's friends (and I am not lucky enough to count myself as one of his personal friends) at the horrific personal attacks Ben is suffering at this moment from people who appear to have never gotten out of the schoolyard themselves.  If it were my personal friend, you bet yourself I'd be pretty angry too.  However, the whole back-and-forth smacks of a pettiness I wish not just we at RedState but those at DailyKos and everywhere else could rise above.  Insults and defamation are made much worse when they are dignified by a response, and certainly nothing I have seen from Ben's detractors is worthy enough to merit attention from the editors.

And that leads me to this post.  While I understand Erick wishing to make a public defense of his friend, and am willing to believe that it was the right thing for him to do even though I disagree with his means because they dignify by response that which is beneath dignity, this "attack" post rubs me the wrong way.  I am no sympathizer of the left in general or of the rude commentators at myDD and DailyKos, but calling them "Stalinist drones" who are attempting to "banalize evil" and "dehumanize" their enemies is a bit much.  I'm willing to concede there seems to be some irrational hatred at work over on "the other side," and their accusations ranging from incest to latent homosexuality to racism are so inane as to become hilarious, but they are not an example of the base evil that was Stalinism or Nazism.  We here at RedState often lament how the left tortures the word "racism" so much that it risks losing its effect, yet we're not above throwing around our own pet -isms when emotions start running high.  Is that really what we want to do?  Are we any better than them when we call for counter-attacks, counter-attacks over something so silly as a blogswarm?  I think that sort of thing is beneath us.

Even if Domenech ripped off every movie review he ever wrote, even if he didn't even bother to see the movies he reviewed, the treatment he's getting from the left is intolerable.

You just don't call people stupid, incestuous, ignorant, homosexual losers just because they lifted someone else's writing for a movie review at some point.

A good friend would defend him from this insanity regardless of the plagiarism issue, and Domenech is lucky to have some good friends here.

I'm a Democrat and I don't like some of what has been thrown against Ben. I would like to see the focus on the issues, the discussion, the debate.

That doesn't work when passes the words of another off as his words. The system breaks down. We offer links for a reason, because we respect individual rights when it comes to intellectual property.

Friends should defend him, that is what friends do. But nobody should defend plagiarism in the blogosphere. The left has unfortunately excused it in the past, that wasn't right. And it isn't right for you to do so now.

....stupid, incestuous, ignorant, homosexual losers.

Let's keep in mind that they did these things well before they had the faintest inkling of plagiarism.

I would like to see the focus on the issues, the discussion, the debate.

That doesn't work when passes the words of another off as his words.

So, assuming arguendo that the charges of plagiarism are accurate, it's your position that it's entirely justifiable to hurl all these various calumnies at Ben?

My God. Be grateful I'm not a moderator here, boy -- you'd be out on your ear so fast your head would spin.

I have a problem with the way Ben was attacked for the same reason I have a problem with the plagiarism -- it hurts the debate.

I think Bob (if I may call you Bob) meant that it's hard to have a reasonable discussion with a plagiarist because you're not debating the plagiarist but the person he's stealing words from.  That certainly doesn't justify all the ad hominem.  Bob was speaking to a different subject.

As for my own judgment on the plagiarism issue, see my comment below.  I won't pass judgment until all the details have been collected and analyzed by people smarter than I am.  That in no way means I approve of all the personal attacks thrown Ben's way.

A discussion about his views should have been expected as he ascended to the WaPo, but it shouldn't have been an attack on his being. That said, there is no excuse for plagiarism. The left's instant attacks made it more difficult for any blogger to ascend in the future, yet the excuse given will be that bloggers (with Ben as an example) are willing to plagiarize.

You're being the voice of sweet reason from the left this evening.  Not what I expected from a fellow who was so caustic toward one of my scholars!

You are exactly right about trying to debate a plagiarizer, that is why I was so mad when a Democratic Congressman (who I didn't favor in the primary) was busted.

You are right to be patient before passing judgement, but if it ends up like it is looking, I think we will all be in agreement. If he is busted solid for plagiarism, I hope we can pass beyond it quickly and get back to disagreeing with eachother.

There are times to come when we will appreciate it.

Which scholar? I've spent too much time being caustic...

Lets step back a little , and let any right or left chips fall where they may on this , Domenech , very shortly will come out the victor , and the left will once again come out looking like the loonies . Let the facts fall  first .

I've enjoyed Augustine's writing here, and the response of the auxin-crazed netroots is way over the top, not that it's ever otherwise. (And they seem particularly exercised just now in general, and not over this affair alone; I need to consult my ephemerides.) That said, there's pretty distinct evidence of plagiarism here. It may, as trevino has asserted, be quite trivial in the general scheme of things. I also realize how intensely agonizing it must be to see someone who, whatever his faults, has been a valuable and an eloquent contributor to RedState, be pilloried by those who could put both their achievements and characters in a matchbox without particularly cramping them. I hope that Ben's employer considers the matter impartially, without regard for the howls of the lunar chiroptera, and I hope that he retains his position and that they may be reduced to their natural state, that of confoundment. But the fact that the charge of plagiarism has come wrapped up with the usual febrile filth from the left does not entitle him to an unconditional defense from it. Let's hear him speak in his defense. Hopefully, we will be able to weigh in on his side with a clear conscience.

that there's any kind of equivalence between what Ben is alleged to have done and the invective that the Kos Kidz have flung toward him is asinine on its face.

Sorry, son; I've been at this far too long not to be able to smell a troll at thirty paces. Your comment history on this is nothing more than a transparently idiotic attempt to pin the tin star of Internet Integrity Policeman to your tie; engaging in faux-earnest handwringing about the "quality of debate" and insisting that these accusations of plagiarism are Serious Business™ to the point that Ben has been discredited (!), while uttering what are at best tepid denunciations of the grotesque slurs that your ideological fellow travellers have flung at this man.

Tell you what: get your own house in order. Then come back and lecture us all -- as if you're bringing light to the darkness -- about how hyperlinks are the only thing that separates the blogosphere from the barbarians.

There are 3 issues:

1. The Coretta King as a communist and the Supreme Court as the KKK. People at Daily Kos will call Ben and Red Staters racist scum. People at Red State will call people at Daily Kos shrill deranged vermin liberals. James Q. Wilson will write an essay about the sad state of our political discourse. Business as usual. (Personally I'd love to see the Post hire a lefty blogger and have dueling blogs -- with prominent links from their front page, instead of hidden deep in the site as they are now.)
   
2. The plagiarism. I've seen several instances that clearly fall under that label, but all of them in college and all in art criticism, and there's no indication that it was an issue in his academic career or in any way related to his leaving W&M. If Ben acknowledges it and apologizes it'll be a minor issue and he'll be ok.
   
3. The potentially more serious issue is the AP article (http://www.bendomenech.com/globe.htm) with the Russert quote. If nobody can track down the original article, this is a problem -- can people with Lexis-Nexis and WestLaw skills please do a thorough search on this?
   

No comment about your party's most famous plagiarist? He's running for President again. I assume you won't be supporting his bid.

And on that point, your fellow Kos travellers have made the ground fertile for future charges of hypocrisy, when certain of those who have attacked Domenech for his alleged plagiarism will inevitably support Biden's candidacy.

I invite my fellow RedStaters to single out Biden supporters on Kos who have attacked Domenech for plagiarism, and throw it back in their faces. I won't do it. I don't visit Kos, because I am not enamored with wading through sewage. (I'm referring to the personal attacks and the vulgarity, in case you were wondering.)

Just a thought: why doesn't everyone who calls for Ben Domenech to get fired, also call for Joe Biden to resign?

Surely the standards for ethics should be higher for a Senator than for some newspaper commentator?

I love that.

I'm saving a link to your comment so that I can aspire to Bob Brigham's standards by linking back to it every time I "borrow" your phrase from here on out.

...that one of Biden's chief reasons for losing last time out was the plagerism, and surely it will be an albatross this time again.

I -- for one -- a Democrat, won't support him on those grounds alone.

As for Domenech... should there be no reasonable explination... I assume you will take the same course of action.

Do you or do you not call for the immediate resignation of plagiarist Joe Biden from the United States Senate?

When presented with reasonable analysis and opinion from a conservative, the left has drifted into Ad Hominem attacks.  Here's a thought:  How do charges of plagiarism invalidate the man's ideas?  

But this has never been about ideas has it (except, apparently, to Bob B)?  This, like censure, like the Dubai explosion, like Halliburton, like every single railing we've heard from any instrument of the left in the last two years, be they bloggers or bloviating congressmen, has been about silencing conservatives.  They can't win on ideas because their ideas are bunk.  

I don't know what's more ridiculous: That this much venom can be spewed on this poor writer, or that the lefty blogosphere is actually conducting themselves like Rush Limbaugh's endless parodies of them.

...the public, to fire him, by voting him out of office.

In the same vein, I'd call for the Washington Post, to assertain the facts and if Mr. Domenech did as it appears, they should also terminate his employment.

Mr. Domenech (and therfore Mr. Biden) has a "history" and if HE stands by his history then it's ultimately his employers decision whether that history is accebtible to them.

You agree... no?

If I ran a newspaper, I'd hire and fire based on job performance, not Internet lynch mobs.

Spellchecker

...as I don't give any weight whatsoever to the charges of racsit or sexist or whatever else came before this. My guess is... without the plagersim... that would have fallen away and he would have been judged by the Post for his writing AT the post.

But plagerism is different... especially for a writer... and given what APPEARS TO BE (and we're still in that stage) his stealing movie reveiws (which are "opinions") he may not be trusted to have his own opinion.

Lets pretend for a minute that there was no "lynch mob" and that the plagerism had come out on its own. Would you still be insisting the Post keep him on as  a writer? Also, wouldn't it be better - if the plagersim is TRUE - to fire Mr. Domenech and find another conservative writer beyond reporach?

If you can show me where he's misused another's work during his tenure at the Post, I'll agree that the Post has a reason to fire him.

Until then, I'd see nothing but appeasement of the left.

...if, say, a POLICE COP did not kill any one while he was a police cop, he should still allowed to patrol our streets. Or if a chef did not poison someone while cooking, he can still make your dinner. Or if an accountant did not steal money, while an accountant, you'd still allow them to do your taxes?

Also, you didn't answer my question... if he did steal the work of other writers... why not get rid of him in favor of another conservative blogger without moral comprimise?

...this has appeared today, written by somone named Oyster on the Washingtong Post Blog...

*

In todays post, Ben had a nice simile that I admired: "a man with a voice so deep that it makes Johnny Cash sound like a soprano. After seeing all the plagerism acusations here, I wondered if he could have actually coined that phrase himself.

Alas, no, twas "adapted" from this: "Ray sings in a flat, scary Country voice that makes Johnny Cash sound like a soprano..." From: 'Roctober'- Magazine #24, Oct. '01.

Too bad, it was the only thing I admired in the whole piece!

*

Again, this all needs to be looked into, but it appears as if this is a case of looks like a duck, walks like a duck...

This really has nothing to do with lynch mobs...

Sure it does. Mr. Domenech had been leading a nice quiet life as a blogger until he had the effrontery to gain a more visible platform. Then he had to be destroyed, with as much industriousness and venom as could be mustered.

The early attempts with the 'racist' smears were merely placeholders while someone with tremendous time on their hands Googled into the past, finally uncovering 1999 archived movie reviews on a college newspaper web site. Ahh, dirt at last! But if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else. Perhaps Mr. Domenech stole a toy car from a friend's house when he was 7.

The intent here was not to protect the Post, or conservatives, from plagiarism. The intent was to personally destroy Ben Domenech.

This has become a standard tactic of the left. They cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, and so they seek to silence their opponents, now stooping to digging up the peccadillos of 18-year-olds.

The Democrats have a plagiarist running for President of the United States. His little episode occurred when he was an adult; in fact a sitting United States Senator. I don't hear them squawking about that. Now they tell me that "the issue" here is Ben Domenech? I don't think so. I think the issue is their own stupidity in wanting to unleash this kind of thing over a 20-something blogger who had just started work. When the return slam comes — and it will — we won't be bothering with bloggers.

with this post is that a writer must ensure that no combination of seven words has ever been used before in the English language, or he must cite the source. Absurd. Even your post fails this test.

The definition of plagiarism goes a bit deeper than that:

to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

...fine, I get it. I too am confused at the fury uleashed by this guys hiring.

But he appears to be a plagerist.

IF that's the case, the Post will be forced to fire him and hopefully they will replace him with someone  untainted.

The attacks on his character were clearly about Mr. Domenech, but the plagerism... that was Mr. Domenech view alone.

As for Biden... I agree... I won't vote for him... ever.

...and I know plagerism when I see it.

Besides, it would have been easy for him to avoid the plagerism charge by simply CITING Roctober in the piece listed above.

I know there are many who WANT this guy to have not done what he's done, but... please... at least be willing to admit a pattern.

look you made your point several posts ago. You now go too far. But not as far as you are getting ready to go.

1. since you can't spell plagiarism your ability to recognize it is called into question.
   
2. Using the Johnny Cash - soprano comparison has been around since I was in high school. Just because you read it somewhere doesn't mean it was original.
   

The way lefties highjack a forum is to show up, make outrageous statements (Bush = hitler, all who support the war are mind numbed robots, etc.) then when they get attacked in kind, they go whining to the administrator that it is so unfair to have the eeeevvviiiiillllll ad hom attacks on the poor lefties by the right wing thugs. They will even make this claim in posts where they make ad homs. They keep this up until they wear out the admin. and he or she starts blocking the conservatives, since 'we conservatives must hold to a higher standard'. The net result of course is that at the end of the day the conservative voices are shut down, and the lefties have yet another echo chamber in which to do what they are doing to Ben.

We really are in a culture war: the left is fascistic in nearly everything they do. From the CPT Orwellian use of 'release' to cover their ingratitude to the soldiers who liberated their captives, to the lousy anti-American bigots in the Kos Koolaid Kids romper room, it is all the same. They are intellectual midgets, with the ethics of microbes. Their hatred of this country and its people is nearly boundless.

Let these lefty hacks and neverwuzzers roar on:

The more America hears them, the tinier their base of support becomes. BUT we should make sure that our voices are not censored, either by their blatant attempts at censorship through 'campaigh finance reform' or through the kind of mob shout downs that the Kos Koolaid Kids specialize in.

This cultural war is like the GWOT, in a sense: the only way the good guys lose is to surrender the battlefield to the fascists and terrorists.

Look, I'm a writer for a living...and I know plagerism (sic) when I see it.

"I'm the expert, and I'm the only one who can say what plagiarism is." That seems to be what you are saying.

If using a seven word phrase coined by another is plagiarism, then we'd all be continually citing William Shakespeare, the most prolific "phrase coiner" English has ever known.

I doubt that you write professionally. Professional writers know the importance of correct spelling, but you continue to misspell "plagiarism" (among other words) in spite of having the correct spelling presented to you numerous times in this very thread.

In this day and age, the attacks travel around the world almost immediately.  We've seen it with Durbin's comparison of the troops at Gitmo to the Nazis and Khmer Rouge.

We have to counter-attack, if only to get the defense of his reputation out there.

And I'm sure you think you're the picture of sweet reason, but that was one-too-many Ben-is-a-thief comments.

So long. Farewell. We hope you fall in a pit.

...that you'd be hard pressed to find many Biden supports.  In a recent Daily Kos straw poll, I believe he got 1% of the vote...and that surprised me.  ;-)

It should have read, supporters.  

The way lefties highjack a forum is to show up, make outrageous statements... [...]

They will even make this claim in posts where they make ad homs. [...]

...the left is fascistic in nearly everything they do...the lousy anti-American bigots in the Kos Koolaid Kids romper room, it is all the same. They are intellectual midgets, with the ethics of microbes. Their hatred of this country and its people is nearly boundless.

if it is true.

...that because I am a Democrat, I am an anti-American bigot without intellect or ethics and that I hate my country and the people in it (presumably including myself?), well...what else is there to say to you?  

you forgot rude and mouthbreathing.

ad hominem pertains to validity.

It should read:

It isn't ad hominem if it is relevent.

I think she was 20, and I offed another in the interim.

is not original with me. OMG! TEH PLAGIARISM!

but at least you seem to enjoy it.

Cheers.

And I had just made a lengthy comment in the previous article where I had put BarbinMD in the position of having to call Helen Keller a plagiarist.

they may be reduced to their natural state, that of confoundment.

Good analysis, CM.

I may get banned for this myself, but I'd like to go on comment here as saying that this banning is completely out of line.

And as for "it's not ad hominem if it's true or valid" -- well, the whole idea is that ad hominem attacks (understood as attacking the one's character and not content of one's ideas) are never OK, and that applies to both sides here.  You can't have it both ways.  And you've just banned someone for pointing that out.

Look, it's pretty simple.  Either you oppose the gutter-tactics employed by a certain subset of your enemies, or you acknowledge that those are the (new?) rules of the game and play by them.  If you take the former route, you have the moral highground to fret over the state of discourse, etc etc.  If you take the later route -- as this post clearly does, and some of the comments herein clearly do -- then you "fire back", but lose that moral highground.  And if someone accuses you of being the same kind of gutter rat, the "he started it!" defnse just rings hollow.

That's not why I banned her. I banned her for a different comment in another thread. My sense of drama got the better of me.

OK, I feel much better about that, then.  Sorry to get righteous there for a bit.  As much as I disagree with most of the postings here, I read this site far more than (say) Kos because of the civility, and I'd hate to see this site lose that advantage.

consider this the internet version of carpet bombing.

Your side will lose.

you won't find many Biden fans on Kos.